


racing to sixty (i’ve been a fool)

by isoneph



Category: Gugudan (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Love Confessions, vagueness and messiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 00:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoneph/pseuds/isoneph
Summary: Sally doesn't feel anything, except the heaviness of wanting something more. Maybe she doesn't know what that is yet, but she wants Soyee to be a part of that.





	racing to sixty (i’ve been a fool)

Sally feels lost. 

Liu Xiening. Sally Liu. Dance team member. Average student, not so average at screwing things up but with a talent for making up for them. But her heart is lonely without the acknowledgement of one thing. 

Jang Sojin. Soyee. 

Sally plays with her untied shoelace, watching the sun disappear completely underneath the horizon. Friday nights after practice are always so empty, and she usually walks home by herself, with nothing but her headphones and the glaring screen of her phone to interact with. She takes her tangled headphones out of her pocket, ready for the way home when something ruins her plans entirely.

“Hey,” Soyee says, walking quicker to keep up with her. She carries her skateboard in the grip of one hand, backpack slung over one shoulder, looking straight out of the memories locked in the forbidden part of Sally's mind. The part that's never supposed to come back again.

The kindergartener who'd stay in at recess just to teach Sally some more Korean, because she'd just moved here from China and had no way of making friends. The third grade Soyee would be the only one willing to sit with her at lunch. The seventh grade Soyee would be the only one fighting off bullies who'd pick on Sally for her less than perfect Korean, her reclusiveness, her strange aura. But Soyee was the only person who would keep her from feeling lonely. The only person who stopped her from withering away into nothing, multiple times. The one who would put up with her nonsensical antics, her confusing ways. 

Maybe Sally should quit while she's ahead. Maybe she's been in it too deep, this whole time, and it hurts because they have something on a level that's so different that they only have each other to share it with.

“You okay?” Sally kicks a rock, feet sore from practice and a day that's been far too long.

“Yeah. Folks were fighting this week so I thought it would be better to get home after it all cooled down.” Soyee slings an arm around Sally's shoulders, and she shivers slightly at the gesture. It's a little awkward given the height difference, but that mess resembling a beating heart underneath her ribs flutters anyways.

Sally doesn't like being touched, but she's made it clear that Soyee and Soyee only is allowed to. She enjoys it a little more than she usually does, and it’s comforting when she’s cold and lonely like she is right now.

“We're almost out of this place, you know,” the taller girl comments. “Soon.”

“Yeah. Soon.” Sally gulps, hands in her pockets and trying so, so hard to stop the words from jumping out of her throat. They'll be out of school in a few weeks, leaving the place behind to bigger and better things. She knows it, but she doesn't want to confront a future without Soyee. Ever.

Now? Sally battles with herself in the silence, littered with the crunching of dead leaves underfoot and the occasional car zooming past. It's the question that Sally asks herself every time she talks to Soyee, ever since middle school and all those times she tried to deny it, deny it so harshly with petty fights and boyfriends and weeks of refusing to even look the girl in the face. It's getting a little too late for that, Sally thinks, as they turn the familiar corners of Sally's neighborhood.

“I know you want to get the hell out of that house,” Sally whispers, words almost lost in the wind. “That acceptance meant a lot to you.” 

Soyee beams. “I'll find a way to tell them, but there's a way for everything.”

There will be a world without Soyee. But there won't be one where Soyee doesn't know that Sally at least tried to put her fears behind her for once and told her how she truly felt.

They're sitting on the worn wooden chairs on Sally's porch, when she finds the courage to just say it.

“I-I wanted to say something,” Sally stammers, a little too fast. 

Soyee drums her fingertips on the splintered armrest of the chair. “Yeah. Anything at all.”

Sally swallows, finding it hard to meet Soyee's eyes. Years of longing and struggle come bubbling up at once.

“I like you,” she finally manages, and she sees Soyee's eyes widen for a split second before she gets out the second part. “I have. For a long time.”

“I don't know,” Sally panics, suddenly feeling regret coming in at the edges of the courage she's built up. “Since grade school. All the times I was being an asshole to you I was forcing myself to forget about how I feel about you. I can't say it enough but I don't want to be apart from you, Jang Sojin.”

That was too much. But it was the truth. Sally knew it was love but never wanted to acknowledge it. And telling Soyee? Even less. 

“Stop that,” Soyee whispers, and Sally doesn't realize that tears have welled up in her eyes. “Do you know something?”

Sally shakes her head, blinking away the tears. 

“I like you a lot, too,” Soyee says, and it's a moment suspended in the air, wispy and surreal with only the light of the streetlamps and bugs chirping to verify that it's something that's actually happening, right here and right now. “You're someone who's always there for me. Someone to distract me and make me laugh so hard that I forget what I was crying over. Someone I try to hold on so tight to because there's no way in hell I would have made it this far without you.”

She almost jumps out of her skin when Soyee places a hand on her cheek and leans in.

It's wordless, like a lot of their exchanges are. Their first kiss is, in the traditional sense, proper, but Sally's eyes are closed and the feeling of Soyee's lips on hers are etched into her memories for good. It makes her mind quiet and finally, she’s able to feel what it’s like to be accepted.

She won't leave her. And that's for sure.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! I love gugudan and recently got into them and so this happened. twt: @cosmicfiavor


End file.
